Saturday night, nataliesee, otterdancing, onecrane and I packed ourselves into the Grace and Holy Trinity Church along with a couple hundred other nerds and curiosity-seekers to listen to Benjamin Bagby perform the first 1000 lines of BEOWULF.

The church is the Episcopal cathedral in downtown KC, right across the street from the convention center. It was extremely busy, and as we pulled into the cathedral parking lot, a bony old man in a long gray scarf stopped us. Robin rolled down the window and said, "We're here for Beowulf!" He waved us in.


I'd never been inside the church before and was delighted to find that the sanctuary is built almost entirely of limestone. The rock was blackened and tarnished from the century and more that it's sheltered congregations, and the vaulted ceiling is made of dark wood, with thick buttresses and rafters. Black ironwork separated us from the altar, with golden grapes, roses, and birds twined in. The pews matched the roof; hard, dark wood and completely uncomfortable.

Bagby sat on a short bench covered in white fur that had been raised on a platform so we could all see. All the lights dimmed and we sat in the drafty stone church while our storyteller emerged. He wore slacks, a shiny vest, and carried this harp, which was crafted for him specifically according to the best information we have on Anglo-Saxon technology.

Hwaet, he called. Listen.

Because I'm a total Beowulf nerd, I knew when lines had been cut and sections abbreviated - but who cares about Hrothgar's brothers and how they died anyway, right? We want Heorot, we want the night walker, we want Beowulf. Most of it was intact, and Bagby's voice carried the music of the poem to every corner of that church.

Behind his head a projection screen glowed with a translation of the words as he spoke or sang or wailed them. It was great to have, but sometimes I closed my eyes and just listened to the rhythms and patterns. Despite my study of the poem and having done my own translation, I rarely followed along with the exact phrases. Some stuck out, my favorites like wan under wolcum and niht-genga, but mostly it was about hearing the sounds and Bagby's evocation of ancient ideas through his range of voice and music.

My favorite part was the first time he spoke of sorrow, at the funeral of Scyld. The word is wa, which became woe, and when he grabbed onto it, his voice dragged it out into mourning wail. I may have stopped breathing.

The other stroke of genius was during the greeting feast, when Unferth speaks up to accuse Beowulf of exaggerating his glory. Babgy slurred the speech. Just sightly at first, but I noticed it when he said words I knew. But the drunkeness grew and soon he was making a parody of Unferth. I never thought to hear Old English slurred. It was hilarious, and I definitely wasn't the only person to think so.

The performance lasted about 90 minutes, through Grendel's attack and the rending of his arm. I was amused by the translation, which chose the word "gore" for a lot of the violent imagery. Once, it was on the screen three times simultaneously. And they way they translated Beowulf's contest with Breca had Natalie leaning over to make dirty innuendos while the two youthful warriors splashed into the ocean with naked swords and could not be pulled away from each other.

Afterwards, Bagby came back out for a Q&A session that was unfortunately overrun by our hostess, a scary old white woman obviously descended from generations of KC money. She kept stealing the mic back from Bagby and trying to answer the questions for him. It was rude and appalling.

BUT he did manage to get a few words in, especially about the history of the harp and how it was made, how he uses it to highlight his performance. Most interesting to me was when he was talking directly about the language of the poem - that the scops were not necessarily trying to rhyme, but that their interest was in the sounds of the whole thing, of the words weaving together at all levels - like music.

He thinks of it as color, he said, that the poem itself is like an auditory painting.

*love*

I'm having a hard time not just spending my day wrapped up in delicious Old English.

-image by Olga George</lj></lj> </lj>

Politics and the Media: Chris Matthews slams Kevin James for historical ignorance. It gets good around 3:50 when Matthews basically tells James that he's an ignorant fuckhead. VERY entertaining. And a blatant example of the rhetoric and ignorance-mongering of our current administration.

Writing: Lilith St. Crow offers an excellent essay for new and struggling writers: You have the right to write!

Art, urban fantasy, and amazement: MUTO, by Blu. An Ambiguous Animation Painted on Public Walls. This took a lot of time and love. It's fucking brilliant.

I just finished the first chapter of Strange Maid.

This thing scares me. It's not grounded in anything but me, and this crazy twelve-hundred-year-old poem.

But I get to write things like

They ate his face first.

which I love for its simplicity, and

Secrets danced in the clicking teeth and squirming insects.

which is maybe the theme.